CHAPTER FOURTEEN
That afternoon we had a scene, and late that night another. The memoryof the former is a little blotted out. Things began to move so quicklythat, try as I will to arrange their sequence in my mind, I cannot. Icannot even very distinctly remember what she told me at that firstexplanation. I must have attacked her fiercely--on the score of deMersch, in the old vein; must have told her that I would not in theinterest of the name allow her to see the man again. She told me things,too, rather abominable things, about the way in which she had gotHalderschrodt into her power and was pressing him down. Halderschrodtwas de Mersch's banker-in-chief; his fall would mean de Mersch's, and soon. The "so on" in this case meant a great deal more. Halderschrodt,apparently, was the "somebody who was up to something" of the Americanpaper--that is to say the allied firms that Halderschrodt represented.I can't remember the details. They were too huge and too unfamiliar, andI was too agitated by my own share in the humanity of it. But, in sum,it seemed that the fall of Halderschrodt would mean a sort of incrediblyvast Black Monday--a frightful thing in the existing state of publicconfidence, but one which did not mean much to me. I forget how she saidshe had been able to put the screw on him. Halderschrodt, as you mustremember, was the third of his colossal name, a man without much geniusand conscious of the lack, obsessed with the idea of operating someenormous coup, like the founder of his dynasty, something in whichforesight in international occurrence played a chief part. That idea washis weakness, the defect of his mind, and she had played on thatweakness. I forget, I say, the details, if I ever heard them; theyconcerned themselves with a dynastic revolution somewhere, a revolutionthat was to cause a slump all over the world, and that had beenengineered in our Salon. And she had burked the revolution--betrayed it,I suppose--and the consequences did not ensue, and Halderschrodt and allthe rest of them were left high and dry.
The whole thing was a matter of under-currents that never came to thesurface, a matter of shifting sands from which only those with theclearest heads could come forth.
"And we ... we have clear heads," she said. It was impossible to listento her without shuddering. For me, if he stood for anything,Halderschrodt stood for stability; there was the tremendous name, andthere was the person I had just seen, the person on whom a habit of mindapproaching almost to the royal had conferred a presence that had someof the divinity that hedges a king. It seemed frightful merely toimagine his ignominious collapse; as frightful as if she had pointed outa splendid-limbed man and said: "That man will be dead in five minutes."That, indeed, was what she said of Halderschrodt.... The man had salutedher, going to his death; the austere inclination that I had seen hadbeen the salutation of such a man.
I was so moved by one thing and another that I hardly noticed thatGurnard had come into the room. I had not seen him since the night whenhe had dined with the Duc de Mersch at Churchill's, but he seemed sopart of the emotion, of the frame of mind, that he slid noiselesslyinto the scene and hardly surprised me. I was called out of theroom--someone desired to see me, and I passed, without any transition offeeling, into the presence of an entire stranger--a man who remains avoice to me. He began to talk to me about the state of my aunt's health.He said she was breaking up; that he begged respectfully to urge that Iwould use my influence to take her back to London to consult SirJames--I, perhaps, living in the house and not having known my aunt forvery long, might not see; but he ... He was my aunt's solicitor. He wasquite right; my aunt _was_ breaking up, she had declined visibly in thefew hours that I had been away from her. She had been doing businesswith this man, had altered her will, had seen Mr. Gurnard; and, in someway had received a shock that seemed to have deprived her of allvolition. She sat with her head leaning back, her eyes closed, the linesof her face all seeming to run downward.
"It is obvious to me that arrangements ought to be made for your returnto England," the lawyer said, "whatever engagements Miss Granger or Mr.Etchingham Granger or even Mr. Gurnard may have made."
I wondered vaguely what the devil Mr. Gurnard could have to say in thematter, and then Miss Granger herself came into the room.
"They want me," my aunt said in a low voice, "they have been persuadingme ... to go back ... to Etchingham, I think you said, Meredith."
I became conscious that I wanted to return to England, wanted it verymuch, wanted to be out of this; to get somewhere where there wasstability and things that one could understand. Everything here seemedto be in a mist, with the ground trembling underfoot.
"Why ..." Miss Granger's verdict came, "we can go when you like.To-morrow."
Things immediately began to shape themselves on these unexpected lines,a sort of bustle of departure to be in the air. I was employed toconduct the lawyer as far as the porter's lodge, a longish traverse. Hebeguiled the way by excusing himself for hurrying back to London.
"I might have been of use; in these hurried departures there aregenerally things. But, you will understand, Mr.--Mr. Etchingham; at atime like this I could hardly spare the hours that it cost me to comeover. You would be astonished what a deal of extra work it gives and howfar-spreading the evil is. People seem to have gone mad. Even I havebeen astonished."
"I had no idea," I said.
"Of course not, of course not--no one had. But, unless I am muchmistaken--_much_--there will have to be an enquiry, and people will bevery lucky who have had nothing to do with it ..."
I gathered that things were in a bad way, over there as over here; thatthere were scandals and a tremendous outcry for purification in thehighest places. I saw the man get into his fiacre and took my way backacross the court-yard rather slowly, pondering over the part I was tofill in the emigration, wondering how far events had conferred on me apartnership in the family affairs.
I found that my tacitly acknowledged function was that of supervisingnurse-tender, the sort of thing that made for personal tenderness in thearidity of profuse hired help. I was expected to arrange a rug just a_little_ more comfortably than the lady's maid who would travel in thecompartment--to give the finishing touches.
It was astonishing how well the thing was engineered; the removal, Imean. It gave me an even better idea of the woman my aunt had been thaneven the panic of her solicitor. The thing went as smoothly as thedisappearance of a caravan of gypsies, camped for the night on a heathbeside gorse bushes. We went to the ball that night as if from ahousehold that had its roots deep in the solid rock, and in the morningwe had disappeared.
The ball itself was a finishing touch--the finishing touch of mysister's affairs and the end of my patience. I spent an interminablenight, one of those nights that never end and that remain quivering andraw in the memory. I seemed to be in a blaze of light, watching, througha shifting screen of shimmering dresses--her and the Duc de Mersch. Idon't know whether the thing was really noticeable, but it seemed thateveryone was--that everyone must be--remarking it. I thought I caughtwomen making smile-punctuated remarks behind fans, men answeringinaudibly with eyes discreetly on the ground. It was a mixed assembly,somebody's liquidation of social obligations, and there was a sprinklingof the kind of people who do make remarks. It was not the noticeabilityfor its own sake that I hated, but the fact that their relations bytheir noticeability made me impossible, whilst the notice itselfconfirmed my own fears. I hung, glowering in corners, noticeable enoughmyself, I suppose.
The thing reached a crisis late in the evening. There was a kind ofwinter-garden that one strolled in, a place of giant palms stretching upinto a darkness of intense shadow. I was prowling about in the shadowsof great metallic leaves, cursing under my breath, in a fury of nervousirritation; quivering like a horse martyrised by a stupidly mercilessdriver. I happened to stand back for a moment in the narrowest of paths,with the touch of spiky leaves on my hand and on my face. In front of mewas the glaring perspective of one of the longer alleys, and, steppinginto it, a great band of blue ribbon cutting across his chest, came deMersch with her upon his arm. De Mersch himself hardly counted. He had away of glowi
ng, but he paled ineffectual fires beside her maenadic glow.There was something overpowering in the sight of her, in the fire of hereyes, in the glow of her coils of hair, in the poise of her head. Shewore some kind of early nineteenth-century dress, sweeping low from thewaist with a tenderness of fold that affected one with delicate pathos,that had a virgin quality of almost poignant intensity. And beneath itshe stepped with the buoyancy--the long steps--of a triumphing Diana.
It was more than terrible for me to stand there longing with a black,baffled longing, with some of the base quality of an eavesdropper andall the baseness of the unsuccessful.
Then Gurnard loomed in the distance, moving insensibly down the long,glaring corridor, a sinister figure, suggesting in the silence of hisoncoming the motionless flight of a vulture. Well within my field ofsight he overtook them and, with a lack of preliminary greeting thatsuggested supreme intimacy, walked beside them. I stood for somemoments--for some minutes, and then hastened after them. I was going todo something. After a time I found de Mersch and Gurnard standingfacing each other in one of the doorways of the place--Gurnard, a small,dark, impassive column; de Mersch, bulky, overwhelming, florid, standingwith his legs well apart and speaking vociferously with a good deal ofgesture. I approached them from the side, standing rather insistently athis elbow.
"I want," I said, "I would be extremely glad if you would give me aminute, monsieur." I was conscious that I spoke with a tremour of thevoice, a sort of throaty eagerness. I was unaware of what course I wasto pursue, but I was confident of calmness, of self-control--I was equalto that. They had a pause of surprised silence. Gurnard wheeled andfixed me critically with his eye-glass. I took de Mersch a little apart,into a solitude of palm branches, and began to speak before he had askedme my errand.
"You must understand that I would not interfere without a good deal ofprovocation," I was saying, when he cut me short, speaking in a thick,jovial voice.
"Oh, we will understand that, my good Granger, and then ..."
"It is about my sister," I said--"you--you go too far. I must ask you,as a gentleman, to cease persecuting her."
He answered "The devil!" and then: "If I do not----?"
It was evident in his voice, in his manner, that the man was alittle--well, _gris_. "If you do not," I said, "I shall forbid her tosee you and I shall ..."
"Oh, oh!" he interjected with the intonation of a reveller at a farce."We are at that--we are the excellent brother." He paused, and thenadded: "Well, go to the devil, you and your forbidding." He spoke withthe greatest good humour.
"I am in earnest," I said; "very much in earnest. The thing has gone toofar, and even for your own sake, you had better ..."
He said "Ah, ah!" in the tone of his "Oh, oh!"
"She is no friend to you," I struggled on, "she is playing with you forher own purposes; you will ..."
He swayed a little on his feet and said: "Bravo ... bravissimo. If wecan't forbid him, we will frighten him. Go on, my good fellow ..." andthen, "Come, go on ..."
I looked at his great bulk of a body. It came into my head dimly that Iwanted him to strike me, to give me an excuse--anything to end the sceneviolently, with a crash and exclamations of fury.
"You absolutely refuse to pay any attention?" I said.
"Oh, absolutely," he answered.
"You know that I can do something, that I can expose you." I had a vagueidea that I could, that the number of small things that I knew to hisdiscredit and the mass of my hatred could be welded into a damningwhole. He laughed a high-pitched, hysterical laugh. The dawn wasbeginning to spread pallidly above us, gleaming mournfully through theglass of the palm-house. People began to pass, muffled up, on their wayout of the place.
"You may go ..." he was beginning. But the expression of his facealtered. Miss Granger, muffled up like all the rest of the world, wascoming out of the inner door. "We have been having a charming ..." hebegan to her. She touched me gently on the arm.
"Come, Arthur," she said, and then to him, "You have heard the news?"
He looked at her rather muzzily.
"Baron Halderschrodt has committed suicide," she said. "Come, Arthur."
We passed on slowly, but de Mersch followed.
"You--you aren't in _earnest_?" he said, catching at her arm so that weswung round and faced him. There was a sort of mad entreaty in his eyes,as if he hoped that by unsaying she could remedy an irremediabledisaster, and there was nothing left of him but those panic-stricken,beseeching eyes.
"Monsieur de Sabran told me," she answered; "he had just come frommaking the _constatation_. Besides, you can hear ..."
Half-sentences came to our ears from groups that passed us. A very oldman with a nose that almost touched his thick lips, was saying toanother of the same type:
"Shot himself ... through the left temple ... _Mon Dieu_!"
De Mersch walked slowly down the long corridor away from us. There wasan extraordinary stiffness in his gait, as if he were trying to emulatethe goose step of his days in the Prussian Guard. My companion lookedafter him as though she wished to gauge the extent of his despair.
"You would say '_Habet_,' wouldn't you?" she asked me.
I thought we had seen the last of him, but as in the twilight of thedawn we waited for the lodge gates to open, a furious clatter of hoofscame down the long street, and a carriage drew level with ours. A momentafter, de Mersch was knocking at our window.
"You will ... you will ..." he stuttered, "speak ... to Mr. Gurnard.That is our only chance ... now." His voice came in mingled with thecold air of the morning. I shivered. "You have so much power ... withhim and...."
"Oh, I ..." she answered.
"The thing must go through," he said again, "or else ..." He paused. Thegreat gates in front of us swung noiselessly open, one saw into thecourt-yard. The light was growing stronger. She did not answer.
"I tell you," he asseverated insistently, "if the British Governmentabandons my railway _all_ our plans ..."
"Oh, the Government won't _abandon_ it," she said, with a littleemphasis on the verb. He stepped back out of range of the wheels, and weturned in and left him standing there.
* * * * *
In the great room which was usually given up to the political plottersstood a table covered with eatables and lit by a pair of candles in tallsilver sticks. I was conscious of a raging hunger and of a fierceexcitement that made the thought of sleep part of a past of phantoms. Ibegan to eat unconsciously, pacing up and down the while. She wasstanding beside the table in the glow of the transparent light. Pallidblue lines showed in the long windows. It was very cold and hideouslylate; away in those endless small hours when the pulse drags, when theclock-beat drags, when time is effaced.
"You see?" she said suddenly.
"Oh, I see," I answered--"and ... and now?"
"Now we are almost done with each other," she answered.
I felt a sudden mental falling away. I had never looked at things inthat way, had never really looked things in the face. I had grown soused to the idea that she was to parcel out the remainder of my life,had grown so used to the feeling that I was the integral portion of herlife ... "But I--" I said, "What is to become of me?"
She stood looking down at the ground ... for a long time. At last shesaid in a low monotone:
"Oh, you must try to forget."
A new idea struck me--luminously, overwhelming. I grew reckless."You--you are growing considerate," I taunted. "You are not so sure, notso cold. I notice a change in you. Upon my soul ..."
Her eyes dilated suddenly, and as suddenly closed again. She saidnothing. I grew conscious of unbearable pain, the pain of returninglife. She was going away. I should be alone. The future began to existagain, looming up like a vessel through thick mist, silent, phantasmal,overwhelming--a hideous future of irremediable remorse, of solitude, ofcraving.
"You are going back to work with Churchill," she said suddenly.
"How did you know?" I asked breat
hlessly. My despair of a sort foundvent in violent interjecting of an immaterial query.
"You leave your letters about," she said, "and.... It will be best foryou."
"It will not," I said bitterly. "It could never be the same. I don'twant to see Churchill. I want...."
"You want?" she asked, in a low monotone.
"You," I answered.
She spoke at last, very slowly:
"Oh, as for me, I am going to marry Gurnard."
I don't know just what I said then, but I remember that I found myselfrepeating over and over again, the phrases running metrically up anddown my mind: "You couldn't marry Gurnard; you don't know what he is.You couldn't marry Gurnard; you don't know what he is." I don't supposethat I knew anything to the discredit of Gurnard--but he struck me inthat way at that moment; struck me convincingly--more than any array offacts could have done.
"Oh--as for what he is--" she said, and paused. "_I_ know...." and thensuddenly she began to speak very fast.
"Don't you see?--_can't_ you see?--that I don't marry Gurnard for whathe is in that sense, but for what he is in the other. It isn't amarriage in your sense at all. And ... and it doesn't affect you ...don't you _see_? We have to have done with one another, because ...because...."
I had an inspiration.
"I believe," I said, very slowly, "I believe ... you _do_ care...."
She said nothing.
"You care," I repeated.
She spoke then with an energy that had something of a threat in it. "Doyou think I would? Do you think I could?... or dare? Don't youunderstand?" She faltered--"but then...." she added, and was silent fora long minute. I felt the throb of a thousand pulses in my head, on mytemples. "Oh, yes, I care," she said slowly, "but that--that makes itall the worse. Why, yes, I care--yes, yes. It hurts me to see you. Imight.... It would draw me away. I have my allotted course. Andyou--Don't you see, you would influence me; you would be--you _are_--adisease--for me."
"But," I said, "I could--I would--do anything."
I had only the faintest of ideas of what I would do--for her sake.
"Ah, no," she said, "you must not say that. You don't understand....Even that would mean misery for you--and I--I could not bear. Don't yousee? Even now, before you have done your allotted part, I amwanting--oh, wanting--to let you go.... But I must not; I must not. Youmust go on ... and bear it for a little while more--and then...."
There was a tension somewhere, a string somewhere that was stretchedtight and vibrating. I was tremulous with an excitement thatovermastered my powers of speech, that surpassed my understanding.
"Don't you see ..." she asked again, "you are the past--the passing. Wecould never meet. You are ... for me ... only the portrait of a man--ofa man who has been dead--oh, a long time; and I, for you, only apossibility ... a conception.... You work to bring me on--to make mepossible."
"But--" I said. The idea was so difficult to grasp. "I will--there mustbe a way--"
"No," she answered, "there is no way--you must go back; must try. Therewill be Churchill and what he stands for--He won't die, he won't evencare much for losing this game ... not much.... And you will have toforget me. There is no other way--no bridge. We can't meet, you andI...."
The words goaded me to fury. I began to pace furiously up and down. Iwanted to tell her that I would throw away everything for her, wouldcrush myself out, would be a lifeless tool, would do anything. But Icould tear no words out of the stone that seemed to surround me.
"You may even tell him, if you like, what I and Gurnard are going to do.It will make no difference; he will fall. But you would like him to--tomake a good fight for it, wouldn't you? That is all I can do ... foryour sake."
I began to speak--as if I had not spoken for years. The house seemed tobe coming to life; there were noises of opening doors, of voicesoutside.
"I believe you care enough," I said "to give it all up for me. I believeyou do, and I want you." I continued to pace up and down. The noises ofreturning day grew loud; frightfully loud. It was as if I must hasten,must get said what I had to say, as if I must raise my voice to make itheard amid the clamour of a world awakening to life.
"I believe you do ... I believe you do...." I said again and again, "andI want you." My voice rose higher and higher. She stood motionless, aninscrutable white figure, like some silent Greek statue, a harmony offalling folds of heavy drapery perfectly motionless.
"I want you," I said--"I want you, I want you, I want you." It wasunbearable to myself.
"Oh, be quiet," she said at last. "Be quiet! If you had wanted me I havebeen here. It is too late. All these days; all these--"
"But ..." I said.
From without someone opened the great shutters of the windows, and thelight from the outside world burst in upon us.